Article 31 of the RA Constitution provides, “No one may be deprived of property, except through judicial procedure in cases provided for by law.
Expropriation of property for the needs of society and the State may be carried out only in exceptional cases of paramount public interest, as prescribed by law, with prior equivalent compensation.”
Vardan Poghosyan, member of the Experts Committee on Constitutional Reforms adjacent to the RA President, believes that this article is controversial.
“Not any deprivation of property is expropriation, because deprivation may be done through the seizure, or for example dangerous situations have arisen: some materials, animals or foods comprise serious hazard fro public. How shall the administrative body wait for a court decision, and then have opportunity to confiscate these dangerous materials,” he said.
According to the lawyer the Article was simply copied from the Constitution of the Russian Federation, “We are one of the few states that automatically copied Article 31 from the Russian Constitution. Russia itself has problems related to this article.”
Still, Mr. Poghosyan stressed that the new Draft provides more effective solution to the problem, “The Draft Constitution proposes that the cases of initial constitutional control must be fixed by law. All cases where deprivation of property cause severe consequences for the owner shall provide judicial remedies,” the Expert said and added that this changes are appropriate and do not support further similar dissenting comments as in case of the current article 31 of the Constitution.
